Over the past decade the increasing power of microprocessors coupled with low cost electronic solutions, supporting cellular wireless services as well as personal and local area networks (PANs/LANs), low cost colour displays, social networks, and a range of different software applications have meant that access to information, content, and services has become ubiquitous. Today, users do not think about the technology behind their personal electronic devices and rather than running discrete software applications for specific functions they have become an integral part of their daily lives. Programs to schedule activities, generate reminders, provide rapid communication capabilities dominate but these devices also can contain sensitive personal information, financial information, etc. As such microprocessor based devices, what we once called computers, are increasingly present during virtually all of a person's daily activities both personal and business. As a result, a user may be presented with output information from one or more devices at any time, such as a combined in-vehicle navigation and graphical user interface, their smartphone, and a smart watch.
Accompanying this increasing access and portability of electronic devices is the tide of information, commonly referred to as content, generated by users, enterprises, Governments, and other individuals, groups, businesses, and service providers. With an estimated 100 billion plus web pages on over 100 million websites, and almost two billion users accessing this it's easy to understand but hard to comprehend how much data is being uploaded and downloaded every second on the Internet. Users are typically presented with this content by either soliciting for it, such as their performing a search or registering with a content source (e.g. a Rich Site Summary—RSS feed), via unsolicited communications from third parties who have acquired an electronic address for the user, or through implicit solicitation by associating a profile of themselves with a service such as a social network or social media.
Accordingly, through a convergence of computerization, wireless capabilities, digitalization, and ease of dissemination, the amount of potential information that may be bombarded on individual users may prove overwhelming whether solicited or unsolicited. In many instances this sheer volume of information may prevent or discourage users from making any effort to examine the information and find what is immediately desirable or necessary. For enterprises this also creates an issue in that they need to ensure that their brand is visible to users, is accessed by users, and supports the overall business activities of the enterprise. At the same time a large number of enterprises hope that the rapid expansions in social networks and social media generally can support and enhance their overall online presence but at present apart from very limited presences do not really understand how to leverage it to their benefit or integrate into their overall marketing plan. At the same time their options today within the prior art are typically based upon the establishment of a social network or a bespoke solution build and tailored to them by a web developer. However, social networks such as Facebook™, Twitter™, and Google Plus™ are inherently public in both their networks and associations between their users and whilst this may suit some enterprises, individuals for certain aspects of their activities they may wish to offer private/closed club features to all or a subset of their members. Today therefore bespoke/tailored web sites and web services are established at significant cost to these enterprises/individuals and require dedicated support to add/amend/delete content.
Concurrently with their grappling with these new avenues of communication they are also failing to appreciate and comprehend the fundamental shift that mobile devices are bringing at the same time, both in terms of how customers access and exploit online content but also as the first generations to grow up with it are becoming a commercially significant demographic in all aspects of commerce as they are now buying property, having children, etc. There are also increasing concerns over the openness of most social media applications and social networks and security for using them as commercial aspects of the enterprises overall operations.
The inventors have established an inventive turn-key software application that allows an enterprise to create invitation only private groups on mobile device platforms and monetize aspects of this online private group through direct payments to the club owner. An individual, a group, a society, a business or enterprise irrespective of whether they are active on free social networks such as Facebook™ and Twitter™ can exploit the inventive turn-key software application augmenting their business with clear visibility of the return on investment. As such the inventive turn-key software application provides an effective “one-stop shop” for those looking to establish and build their brand on mobile technology.
Other aspects and features of the present invention will become apparent to those ordinarily skilled in the art upon review of the following description of specific embodiments of the invention in conjunction with the accompanying figures.